Chanakya's Chant
by Ashwin Sanghi
The year is 340 BC. A hunted, haunted Brahmin
youth vows revenge for the gruesome murder of his beloved father. Cold,
calculating, cruel and armed with a complete absence of accepted morals, he
becomes the most powerful political strategist in Bharat and succeeds in
uniting a ragged country against the invasion of the army of that demigod,
Alexander the Great. Pitting the weak edges of both forces against each other,
he pulls off a wicked and astonishing victory and succeeds in installing
Chandragupta on the throne of the mighty Mauryan empire.
History knows him as the brilliant strategist
Chanakya. Satisfied-and a little bored-by his success as a kingmaker, through
the simple summoning of his gifted mind, he recedes into the shadows to write
his Arthashastra, the 'science of wealth'. But history, which exults in
repeating itself, revives Chanakya two and a half millennia later, in the
avatar of Gangasagar Mishra, a Brahmin teacher in smalltown India who becomes
puppeteer to a host of ambitious individuals-including a certain slumchild who
grows up into a beautiful and powerful woman.
Modern India happens to be
just as riven as ancient Bharat by class hatred, corruption and divisive
politics and this landscape is Gangasagar's feasting ground. Can this wily
pandit-who preys on greed, venality and sexual deviance-bring about another
miracle of a united India? Will Chanakya's chant work again? Ashwin Sanghi, the
bestselling author of The Rozabal Line, brings you yet another historical
spinechiller?
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